Clear and Create Space if You’re Hosting this Holiday

Is everyone opening presents at your house? Are you responsible for cooking a festive feast? Don’t let the space in your home limit the amount of fun you can have. Make sure in-laws, friends and neighbors can join in your joyful occasion by clearing out the clutter in your home and opening your door to more people.

Work With What You Have

Instead of relocating your event to an expensive venue, make your space work for you. Whether you live in a small apartment or your living room feels overwhelmed by a tree and gifts, leverage an area by assessing these three points:

What items are essential to the party? What items are not?

What is the maximum number of people you can expect to host at once?

Does everyone need to be seated at the same time?

Should it stay or should it go?

While your coffee table may be a nice centerpiece to the room and pull your furniture together, it may not be crucial during a party. Furniture that serves more of a fashionable purpose than a functional need can be temporarily relocated to another room or pushed up against a wall to create more floor space.

“The main room of the party should look like an arena. All table surfaces and seating pushed to the perimeter. This makes for a great traffic area for people coming in and out of the room. Also, it allows for groups of people that know each other to congregate in small cuddles without having to navigate pieces of furniture,” says Angelica Holiday of Organize Rescue.

RSVPs Runneth Over

Are you worried that the number of people you are inviting will overwhelm your space? Some homes just aren’t big enough to accommodate everyone in your family, but should this mean you don’t get to host?

If you think your house has the potential of being overrun during the holidays, try stretching out your party and staggering the guests. Have your immediate family over for donuts and coffee in the morning then invite neighbors to your home for an early afternoon happy hour.

Try to keep what you’re serving simple so that cleaning up and rebooting is possible in between guests.

People, people everywhere, but not a place to sit.

Maybe your problem isn’t space so much as seating. Sure you can rent chairs and tables, but that can get expensive and reduce your traffic areas to almost nothing. Instead consider an informal meal that doesn’t require seating.

You can serve soup, sandwiches or other “one plate, one utensil” dishes. Your guests won’t mind standing or sitting on a couch with a delicious meal. They might even enjoy the relaxed opportunity to mingle and eat whenever they choose.

The holidays don’t have to be about finding the perfect place to put everyone. Just create a space that allows for everyone to be social and comfortable and your holiday event will be a hit.